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The slow train from Chinese city Dandong to Pyongyang trundled along the North Korean countryside.

My tour group had just crossed the border when I was approached by a North Korean officer, asking to look through the photos on my camera.

A photo of a dilapidated border town shack — delete. A photo of a crowd washing clothes in a river — delete. A photo of a barefoot farmer working in a field — delete.

The officer then threatened to confiscate my camera, but decided to let me keep it after I gifted him with a pack of smokes from China.

'The great comrade Kim Jong-un!'

Volunteer children come out to clean around Kim dynasty statues in the rain.(ABC News: Vicky Xiuzhong Xu)

This was November 2015 back when I was in China — my friend and I decided to tag along with a group of middle-aged retirees on a trip to North Korea, which is not an uncommon destination for Chinese travellers.

The evening drew in, and when we saw a sudden increase in the number of lights outside, we knew that the train had arrived in Pyongyang.

At first glance Pyongyang did seem like the socialist fairyland that Kim Jong-un always wanted it to be.

There were massive concrete apartment blocks painted in pastel colours — pink, mint, and light yellow. Buildings were symmetrical and nicely laid out. There were no commercials, advertisements, or billboards.

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Surprisingly, people were just going about their lives. Some were driving, most rode bicycles. A couple were holding hands and chatting amorously. A little girl in a hello kitty shirt was running after her brother.

But the brightest colours were the propaganda banners.

"The great comrade Kim Jong-un! Forever faithful to you until death!"

We visited monuments, museums, bars, and got to walk throughout parks across the country and talk to people, but a lot of the time we were jammed in a minibus listening to the propaganda speeches given by the tour guides.

'Do I look like I'm starving?'

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Anti-American propaganda on tours of North Korea

Housing is free in North Korea, as well as medical care and education, so we were told.

"Is that not good? That must be good, right?" The head tour guide asked.

"Do North Korean people have enough food to eat? Are they really starving?" I asked the 23-year-old tour guide Han and a Pyongyang local sitting next to me on the bus.

"Do I look like I'm starving? I'm 64 kilograms and desperately need to lose some weight!" she chuckled.

A propaganda van in Pyongyang carrying two loudspeakers and broadcasting as it drives.(ABC News: Vicky Xiuzhong Xu)

But there are defectors who left the country and they speak publicly about not having enough food to eat here, I said.

"The defectors," Han lowered her voice, "they all eventually come back, and the state offers to send them to the best schools if they're of schooling age.

"The state will still give them free housing.

"Then the defectors will make speeches on TV that after experiencing two different [social] systems, they realise this one is better."

Plastic surgeries and a general obsession with beauty are de rigueur in South Korea.

"But in North Korea the state pays for your plastic surgeries," Han said.

She closed her eyes to show me scars from her artificial double eyelid surgery, a popular procedure in Asia to make eyes look more European.

"My tattooed eyeliner is also free," she said, "every girl is eligible once they turn 18".

Drunk karaoke bars, artists, and Otto Warmbier

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Some of the nightlife that I saw around Pyongyang

Wandering around our hotel's long and eerie corridors, my friend and I discovered a small party in the basement one night where a handful of middle-aged North Koreans were drinking and singing as young curious children watched.

The men bought us drinks and invited us to dance with them. A couple retreated to a couch, kissing. The children spoke some English and told us they were 7 and 11.

Nonetheless, we clinked glasses and sang old songs — even American songs — and danced in circles, but not without a little sense of danger as we had been told not to hang out with North Koreans.

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North Korean artists sketch each other and passers by in downtown Pyongyang.

They left around midnight, but one of them came back after we had said goodbye.

Wearing a navy polo shirt and grey oversized pants, the man stood in front of us with a soldier's pose. The disco ball in the room rotated, spinning red dots of light on his smiling face.

He pointed a finger at us, and then pointed at his own temple. He did it over and over and over until we finally understood and promised to always remember him too.

Those were the sorts of moments where I felt the North Korean trip had led to some insightful experiences and meaningful views of the country and its people.

'We already have nuclear weapons'

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A tour through some of North Korea's rockets and satellites.

There are sentiments shared by many Chinese and North Koreans: hostility towards the United States, an imbued feeling of being misunderstood by Western commentators, a deep and underlying sense of nationalism, as well as a love for a repressive regime that seems to border on Stockholm Syndrome.

The topic often turned, as it invariably would, to war.

North Koreans live under a manufactured and ever-present threat of a horrific war to protect the motherland, an ethos and mentality that defines the nation.

"Dignity is more important than peace. Just like Chairman Mao said, the Yankees are…" she asked.

"Paper tigers," we answered. Every Chinese person is familiar with the phrase that suggests Americans are big and scary looking but weak.

"We North Koreans aren't afraid of anything, because we have everything," she responded.

"We already have nuclear weapons. We have successfully launched satellites into orbit.

"Most importantly, we are united under our Supreme Leader — this is what America is most afraid of.

"Although we are experiencing some economic difficulties, defending our own country and protecting our own people are priorities…

"If America dares to start another war, we won't be afraid and will definitely realise the unity of our motherland."

A former Chinese soldier who fought in the Korean War stands with North Korean soldiers at the DMZ.(ABC News: Vicky Xiuzhong Xu)

This is a common threat in North Korea, that if attacked the army would not merely defend the North but also take on the South to reunify the nation.

"So if there is a war, will our 13 Chinese nationals support North Korea?" she asked our group.

"We will support!" Many shouted and applauded.

"We have your back!" said the eldest member of the tour, throwing a fist into the air. He was a former Chinese soldier who fought in the Korean War.

In the 1950s, as the tide turned in the Korean War, Mao sent in the Chinese army to defend their neighbours, fearing a collapse of the North would lead to a Western power on China's north-eastern border.

'We choose to live this way, we're very happy'

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A view of the North Korean countryside from the train.

On our last day in North Korea, the tour guides invited me and my friend to drink together at the very same karaoke bar.

Kim, who was a great singer, wanted to know if I was going to take Juche Ideology — the theories that define North Korea's socialism — to Australia when I was planning to go.

He assumed that as a Chinese national living abroad, that I must understand the frustration of having my own country constantly smeared by the West.

Now that I have been to North Korea, I could see with my own eyes that many North Koreans are warm and intelligent individuals and that it would be inaccurate to imagine them as a homogenous, brainwashed collective.

The truth is that North Koreans are not all starving, at least not the majority of people that live in the capital Pyongyang who are considered to have a higher standard of living.

But it was also obvious that the tour guides and the North Korean police tried everything to hide as much poverty from us, but poverty is obviously very difficult to hide.

Heading home, we boarded the train back to China and on the way saw more dilapidated houses and people in torn clothes: these are supposedly the people who also have access to free university education and free plastic surgeries.

The ride back was very quiet in comparison. Eventually I stopped taking photos, and the former Chinese soldier stopped telling war stories.

It wasn't long until we were greeted by massive neon signs, loud pop music, and that good old mixed smell of street food and sewage — we were very glad to be back home.

The snowy countryside of North Korea during the winter of 2015 when I was there.(ABC News: Vicky Xiuzhong Xu)